


to see you live

by liminal



Category: Pride and Prejudice & Related Fandoms, Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016), Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-26 01:32:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15653034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liminal/pseuds/liminal
Summary: Lizzy strays further and further into battle, and Darcy tells himself that he will not force his wife to fight by his side.





	to see you live

**Author's Note:**

> If you don't think Lizzy and Darcy are prime candidates for a 'don't go where I can't follow' moment, you're in the wrong place, my friend.

A year of married life under their belts, and still Darcy’s first thought in battle is of Elizabeth. He sees her charging across the field, burying daggers in torsos and hurling throwing stars at the undead enemy. He sees her pause every now and then to wrench her sword free, push her loosened hair back from her face, take stock of her surroundings. 

And every time, she locates her husband with unfaltering accuracy, bright-eyed and flushed across the ruined landscape, and Darcy tells himself he can be satisfied with these brief glimpses of her, that he will not force his wife to fight by his side.

-

The fighting rages on.

Somewhere in the distance is Pemberley, and Darcy’s thoughts lie in a hundred different directions- his wife, his home, his sister, this battle fought on his own land in one final drive to rid the county of this plague.

Elizabeth wanders further from him, a dot on the horizon. The undead swarm, wave after wave of rotting flesh and disintegrating faces that once belonged to someone’s mother, husband, sister, child. The skies turn grey and when thunder claps and the land around him runs red with blood, Darcy thinks hell truly has been unleashed upon England. 

Eventually, the living outnumber the undead and weak rays of sunshine pierce the clouds to settle upon the victorious- all but one, and Darcy feels the bone-heavy emptiness that tells him who. 

He commandeers the nearest horse and rides for the horizon.

-

She isn’t dead, isn’t bitten, just on her knees in the mud and swinging with exhausted arms at anything that makes a noise. The ground around her is littered with dead bodies and hacked off limbs that betray a little of her aggression, her fury at her home being threatened.

Darcy sidesteps the blade that comes blindly at him and takes Lizzy’s wrists in his hands. She looks up at him, soaked to the bone, and gradually her eyes register her opponent.

Darcy sighs. “What am I going to do with you, Mrs Darcy?”

With gentle hands, he wraps his wife in his leather coat and bundles her into his arms. They cross the wasteland together. 

-

Raised voices slip through the gap between the door and floorboards, and Lizzy sinks down further into the bathtub, knowing full well what storm is coming. Water laps against her aching muscles, a little luxury left to the living. 

The door opens and even with closed eyes, she can tell that it’s her husband glowering behind the screen.

“Don’t,” she warns, but miscommunication and poor timing have always been their forte.

“You certainly have your lady’s maid under your thumb. I near enough had to fight her to come in.” Darcy’s voice, unforgiving at the best of times, is cut through with anger. Tension hums in the air, the clash between two iron wills imminent, and Lizzy shivers in the cooling water.

“She does an excellent job at looking after my own interests.”

“And I do not?”

“Well, at present I have no desire to argue with you. So, unless you have come with fresh water for my bath, be on your way, sir.” 

The wrong words at the wrong time, and Darcy strides around the screen, jug of water in hand. His shirtsleeves are pristine, though his hair and eyes are wild, and beneath her jolt of desire, Lizzy is more than little impressed at how long Shaw was able to stand up to her master for. 

A year of marriage, and their tempers and passions are as volatile as ever. Darcy stands there, eyes locked on his wife in the nude, and if they were both fully dressed, Lizzy has more than an inkling of how things would proceed. As it is, her husband empties the jug and she hisses at the addition of the hot water, as he kneels behind her and takes her loose hair in one hand, washing her shoulders and back with the other.

“Don’t make me give up my sword,” she says, any threat in her words washed away by the relief of the hot water, of her husband’s hands against her tender skin. 

“I wouldn’t do you the dishonour.”

“Then what request are you about to make of me?”

Silence, filled only by the sounds of sloshing water and quiet breathing. Darcy’s ministrations are slow and controlled, washing the mud away in hypnotic circles, running his fingers over her ribs and clavicles and the bruises blossoming under her skin.

Lizzy writhes languidly under his touch, as his mouth comes to her ear and he says, “To exercise a little more self-control. To not try and save everyone single-handedly. To not always run so far from me.”

He punctuates every request with a kiss to her neck, and Lizzy feels desire stir in her, feels the vulnerability of the situation, as her husband sits on solid ground behind her. Years of training, of learning to take the upper hand in any scenario, all undone by firm hands and a gravelly, rasping voice.

And it will not do.

Darcy’s not wrong, she knows, but a warrior has one task to fulfil and stubbornness is a trait that refuses to die. She turns herself around in the tub and sees her husband’s eyes darken. 

“And you? Are you free to fight with abandon, without censure?” she asks, placing wet hands on his cheeks and wiping the grime away. “I would no more ask you to lay down or stay your sword than you would ask me to relinquish mine.”

Darcy huffs. His eyes travel with the rivulets running down her body, but anger hardens his resolve. He leans in and kisses her hard.

“Do not tempt me, Madam,” he says firmly, and walks away.

-

He doesn’t return until late, when the great bonfires of decaying flesh have been lit and he’s seen to all of his tenants’ good health. Tomorrow they’ll assess the land and decide what happen to the farms and the harvest. Tomorrow, he hopes, the burden of being Colonel Darcy will be lifted for good.

That is, if he makes it past tonight.

-

In the dressing room, Lizzy smiles when she hears her bedroom door close. There’s a wantonness in her that rears its head at the knowledge that, despite earlier events, it’s her bed that Darcy comes to at the end of the day.

She emerges in her nightgown and Darcy raises an eyebrow. He’s in just his shirt and breeches, sprawled in an armchair in a manner Lizzy would never have thought possible not too long ago. Somewhere along the line he’d stopped to bathe, and Lizzy frowns at the memory of his hands all over her and her inability to reciprocate the gesture.

Darcy speaks before she can.

“I have not asked you to swap your sword for your ring or to refrain from fighting, and nor will I ask. What I ask, Elizabeth, is that you act less rashly. That you think before launching yourself into the midst of the battlefield.” 

“You think my emotions make me less qualified? You didn’t seem to find me reckless when we were on the right side of Hingham Bridge,” Lizzy snaps, and it’s a low blow she can’t explain. Can’t explain either why she’s arguing, when she knows full well she’d let battle and bloodlust carry her away today, except that her father raised her to be a warrior, and the marriage bed is as challenging a battleground as any.

“I think you do not think about who you leave behind,” Darcy says, ignoring the jibe. His voice is raw and rising, and now they have arrived at the crux of the matter. In the candlelight, the darkness under his eyes is at its most pronounced, and suddenly all the fight goes out of him.

“I thought you dead, Elizabeth. Or worse. And God knows I would not have continued on if you did not.”

And how can Lizzy argue with that, when she too has gone in search of a lover, and a litany of prayers has spilled from her lips over the body she found? 

Slowly, she walks to her husband, settles herself on his lap, holds his face with its bright eyes in her hands.

“You and I both have suffered a mortal wound,” she says quietly, and Darcy’s lips quirk at his stolen line. “I will not go where you do not.”

“Swear to me you’ll be more careful.”

“If you swear to catch me up,” Lizzie smirks. A moment passes, a moment where she’s never quite sure which side of the line she stands on, and then Darcy’s hands snake around her waist, gripping her almost hard enough to hurt, and he grins wolfishly. 

In four long strides, he reaches the bed and throws her down none too gently.

“What am I going to do with you, Mrs Darcy?”

“Try to keep up,” Lizzy says, grabbing the hem of his shirt and pulling him down, too.

They kiss, hard and fast, reveling in the solidity of the other, the warmth of another body still gloriously, beautifully alive. In the flickering candlelight, they shed clothes and sheets, sucking new bruises onto skin that belongs only to them, and at the height of it all, their names are desperate benedictions, at once divine and unholy.


End file.
